Prairie D'Ane

From April 9 through 13, 1864, Union and Confederate forces clashed at Prairie D'Ane, a site in what is now Nevada County, Arkansas. This engagement, sometimes called the Skirmish at Prairie D'Ane, the Battle of Gum Springs, or the Battle of Moscow, formed one piece of the Camden Expedition undertaken during the American Civil War.

That expedition grew out of the broader Red River Campaign of 1864, a Union operation. Federal strategists had mapped out a plan calling for two armies to converge on the enemy at the same time. One column, led by Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Banks, was to march north along the Red River starting from Alexandria, Louisiana, while a second force under Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele advanced southwest out of Little Rock, Arkansas. Together these movements aimed to push Gen. E. Kirby Smith's rebel army back toward its base at Shreveport and bring about its defeat.

Beyond this immediate goal lay a second, more loosely defined stage of the plan. Should the campaign succeed, the two Union armies were meant to unite into a single large force and carry their offensive further, driving westward into Texas.

Background

Prairie D'Âne, whose French name translates to "Donkey Meadow," was a striking natural clearing in southwestern Arkansas, a twenty-mile-square expanse of open grassland ringed almost entirely by thick pine woods. By 1864 travelers and soldiers alike recognized it as a landmark roughly one hundred miles southwest of Little Rock. Several important roads converged there. Washington sat to the west, having served as the Confederate capital of Ar

Prelude

Overall command of the Confederate defenders fell to Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, whose force drew mainly on mounted regiments from Arkansas and Missouri along with a contingent of Arkansas State Troops. These men made up three cavalry divisions, led respectively by General James Fagan, General John Marmaduke, and General Samuel Maxey. Separately, Genl. Kirby Smith had already sent the infantry and dismounted cavalry divisions under Generals John Walker, Thomas Churchill, and Mosby Parsons, together with their artillery support, into Louisiana to counter Union Maj. Gen. Banks as he pushed up the Red River toward Shreveport. A good portion of the Arkansas state troops were conscripts, and some among them had fought in earlier campaigns before deserting, only to be rounded up again by Confederate press gangs.

On the Union side, the assault came from the augmented Seventh Army Corps, led overall by Maj. Gen. Frederick Steele. This corps included two infantry divisions under Generals Frederick Salomon and John Thayer, plus a cavalry division commanded by General Eugene Carr, all backed by five artillery batteries. The bulk of these soldiers hailed from Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas, and Kansas, the last of which contributed two newly formed United States Colored Troops regiments authorized back in 1863. By this stage nearly every regiment in the VII Corps had been depleted well below full strength, worn down by typhoid fever, measles, malaria (called "Southern Fever" at the time), influenza, persistent diarrhea, unidentified viral illnesses, and severe rheumatism brought on by the damp, humid conditions these northern troops had endured while stationed in the Arkansas Delta near Helena between 1862 and 1863. At one juncture during the Arkansas campaign, a single division counted roughly 1000 men on its sick list. In fact, disease claimed the lives of far more federal soldiers in the Arkansas theater than combat did, a pattern that held true for both armies throughout the war.

Battle

Elements of the 1st Iowa Cavalry pushed across the Little Missouri River first, with the 36th Iowa Infantry and 43rd Indiana Infantry crossing behind them on the evening of April 2. The horsemen pushed a picket line forward along the road leading away from the ford, roughly a mile and a quarter south of the river through heavily wooded lowland, and set up a blockade at a spot overlooking an old orchard. The two infantry regiments that followed were told to make camp quickly, the 36th Iowa settling just above the crossing and the 43rd Indiana just below it. Because the hour was already late, the men were told to sleep with weapons ready in anticipation of a strike at daybreak. From their riverside camps, the soldiers could hear gunfire ahead where the 1st Iowa troopers traded shots with Confederate sentries watching the crossing. Yet when Sunday, April 3 dawned, no assault materialized, and the

Aftermath

The Prairie D' Ane battlefield now carries a place on the National Register of Historic Places, recognized under the name Battle of Prairie D' Ane Historic Site. It also falls within the boundaries of the Camden Expedition Sites National Historic Landmark.